R&D MINUTE
WIND TESTING AT THE SAMAYA HIGH CAMP
The development of Samaya products involves numerous testing phases carried out in-house at the Samaya High Camp in Annecy. Adrien Guillon, Product Development & Marketing Manager, explains how wind resistance tests are conducted.
Wind resistance tests are carried out at our premises in Annecy. Having all the equipment available in-house allows us to perform these tests at every stage of development and prototyping, and thus be very precise in product design.
Today, I am going to present two types of tests: those that measure the resistance of tents once pitched in strong winds, and those that verify ease of assembly in the wind.
Regarding wind resistance tests, we have defined test standards according to the type of tent in order to subject the prototypes to conditions as close as possible to the reality of the field. For 4-season tents, this involves reproducing winds above 100 km/h, compared to 70 km/h for 3-season tents. We have a snow cannon and a paramotor on-site, with which we perform all our tests. The paramotor allows for intense testing up to 120 km/h, with sudden and strong winds, to test the tent's resistance. With the snow cannon, we can generate winds at 70-90 km/h to conduct "long-duration" tests.
At the end of each season and before our products are marketed, we supplement these tests with WindLab certification in the standardized wind tunnel of our partner, DAC. Our products are placed in the center of a laminar flow, within a certified enclosure. At this point, we push the tents to their breaking point. This is the final validation step.
As for checking ease of assembly, the question we ask ourselves at each test is whether we can easily pitch the product in the wind, and how we can optimize its assembly and construction to make it even simpler. Concretely, we generate a constant wind speed of approximately 70 km/h with a snow cannon. Our athletes willingly participate in these tests, which are quite effective for getting to know a product! I'll let you discover the test performed on the Samaya INSPIRE2 with our Samaya Family athlete, Nouria Newman.
